Grey's Journal:
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I intended to spend my usual day in the Leicester Square area but, on the tube ride there, I suddenly felt restless and changed course. Instead I continued on the Piccadilly line past Leicester Square to Knightsbridge for no better reason than I wanted one of the delicious ham and cheese croissants made at Harrods. After filling my stomach, I wondered around the nearby posh area of Kensington and Chelsea. Here, as with the rest of the world, the upscale stores fall into one of two categories: they are either dark, old fashioned, small, and so packed with merchandise it is impossible to determine all the store contains, or they are bright, modern, spacious, and have only three items for sale, spread apart like lonely cacti in the desert. The former kind of store is run either by a kindly old man, or an exotic foreign woman; the latter are in the hands of snooty looking blonde girls with upturned noses, or thin, bald men in tight black shirts. In large portions of London, I am aware in a theoretical sense that I live in Europe, but there is nothing in the surrounding architecture that calls it to my attention. Not so in Kensington and Chelsea. There it feels like Europe. All around me were white apartment buildings with little balconies, buildings of red brick with ivy climbing their walls that felt like castles. There are narrow streets with rows of conjoined homes painted in pastel colors: blues, greens, yellows and pinks. Tiny doors with knobs in the middle sit in recessed archways. Often these doors are so close to the sidewalk and the sidewalk is so narrow that I could have touched the door knocker and the side-view mirror of a parked car at the same time. The area is nice, and so obviously well-to-do that it is divorced from the realities of the rest of the city. During my journey, I found one semi-hidden street and passed no less than three front doors left open. Inside, expensive televisions and other consumer electronics stood unprotected by their owners. This is a world apart from the area in which I live where burglaries are common and sketchy looking men on the street openly inquire if I am in the market for a laptop or narcotics. I felt a bit envious and a little out of place in Kensington and Chelsea. This feeling was only intensified when I passed private parks, gated for the benefit of the local property owners. I'd place my hands on the bars and stare in like a street child pressing his nose against a restaurant window. Luckily, I had chosen to wear my long London Fog coat that day (a gift from my parents long before the idea of living in London entered my mind) so at least I could pretend to myself that I didn't look obviously out of place. But, more important with regards to fitting in, was my white skin. London is the most multicultural place I have ever been -- and I truly mean multicultural. People often assume that New York City is multicultural, but my experience says otherwise. While there are a large number of minority groups living in New York, it seems to me that they don't mix. The ethnic communities live separate lives. To me, New York is like a jar of oil and water that has been throughly shaken. It appears mixed, but closer inspection reveals the truth. In London, it seems that the different ethnic groups actually mix and interact with each other. It's not a cosmopolitan utopia by any means. There is still a tendency for people to remain mostly within their own culture and racially motivated crimes do occur. But I see groups of mixed friends and interracial couples in London daily; I think that's fantastic. But in Kensington, this was not the case. I felt like I had stepped into the European city-version of the suburb I grew up in where everyone around me was white and well-to-do. Standing in Kensington and Chelsea, it was the first time in my life I think I have ever been so aware that everyone around me was white. A sociology professor of mine once remarked that white people in the United States tend to think of themselves as without race -- that race is somehow a quality that other people have. Whiteness is not a part of white Americans' identity the way, for example, blackness is for African-Americans. An analogy can be drawn with sexuality. I doubt many heterosexuals think of their sexuality as part of their identity the same way homosexuals do. It would be wrong to say that my months in multicultural London have left me uncomfortable in an all-white environment, but it is something I am now aware of in a way I had never was before. It was like when I went home to the States in December and, strange as it may sound, I noticed for the first time that everyone around me was American. I walked down Fulham Road and eventually passed a school with a fenced in playground. The fence was about twelve feet high and had a sign on it that read: Climbing
of the perimeter fence and walls is illegal.
Anti-climb paint has been used above these signs. What could anti-climb paint possibly be? What did it do? Would it make you itch like poison ivy? Would it permanently stain your hands? Was it as slippery as a frictionless surface? I needed to know. Lucky for me, this fence was next to a house with a small staircase leading to the front door. I stood on the railing and carefully balanced myself as I tried to reach above the sign to touch the paint. Even with the three-foot boost of the stairs, I fell about a foot short of the anti-climb paint. After looking to make sure no one was around, I did a bit of a running jump to reach the paint. Just as I launched in the air, a heartbreakingly beautiful brunette appeared from somewhere behind me. I bounced off the fence and saw her give me a look that indicated she thought I was very, very odd. I reflected on my appearance and situation -- an unshaven man in a long coat standing on the edge of someone else's stairs jumping at apparently nothing -- and I thought to explain my situation (``I wanted to know if the paint would make me itch!'') but she hurried on before I could say anything, which was probably for the best. I was blushing quite intensely anyway and would only have stammered semi-coherently through my embarrassment. No doubt had I actually approached her she would have called the police and they would have beaten me with billy clubs before dumping me back on the poorer side of town. I decided that perhaps it was best for me to move on. P.S. I didn't find out at the time what anti-climb paint does, but a friend sent me this link. |
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Copyright © 2005 Wellington Grey  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. |
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